Rebellious cop teams up with by-the-book cop. Despite personal differences, they must join forces to stop the criminals nobody else can. It’s such a tired, well trodden plot it’d be reasonable to assume there’s nowhere fresh left to take it. Throw in a hefty strand of “American outsider finds himself a fish out of water in a foreign land” and it would be all too easy for The Guard to find itself buried under the weight of its own clichés. Thankfully, McDonagh’s feature debut is a much sharper and darker film than the average buddy cop comedy.
Star of the film is Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson), a foul mouthed and thoroughly unconventional policeman patrolling a windswept, and normally sleepy, region in the west of Ireland. In our introduction to him, Boyle looks over the site of a teen car crash with little more than lazy disinterest. Finding a bag of drugs on the body of one of the teenagers, Boyle only mutters, “I don’t think your Mammy will be too pleased about that now”, before stealing a tab of acid for his own use. Boyle spends the rest of the film swearing with glee at anybody who crosses him, sleeping with call girls and showing little respect for the laws he’s ordered to uphold. Somewhat predictably he also just happens to be a skilled detective with a heroic code of honour. Boyle’s normally quiet patrol is disrupted by the sudden intrusion of a string of murders, a potential serial killer and high-level drug smuggling. This brings in FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), an archetypal straight man with little patience for the absurdity of the situation he now finds himself in. If you’ve seen any kind of buddy cop film before (or for that matter, any film, ever) you can probably guess how their relationship plays out when the two are forced to team up.
You could say these sorts of stories write themselves, but actually that’s only really true when you’re talking about bad films. Fortunately in this case, the main star of the film ends up being the script itself, which wisely treats the whole thing as the blackest of comedies. The dialogue is snappy throughout, and quotable enough that The Guard could easily go onto gain a cult fanbase. The majority of the humour comes from the caustic personality of Gerry Boyle, and at times the script merely serves as a vehicle to let Boyle verbally clash with as many other characters as possible. While this reliably had the whole audience laughing it also means character development and plot never really advance anywhere interesting. Don Cheadle in particular does a great job of playing straight man, but it’s a shame his character is never fleshed out beyond that. Fortunately, Gleeson is perfectly cast in the central role and is more than capable of carrying the bulk of the film himself. While it’s unlikely to really dazzle, The Guard’s playful mix of Spaghetti Western flourishes and Coens-esque dialogue means there’s plenty here to be charmed by.